In the field of printing and photomechanical processing, improvement of operation efficiency in the photomechanical processing step is desired in order to satisfactorily handle the diversity and complexity of prints.
In particular, the plate making step as well as the contact work step is required to be operated in a brighter room for the purpose of rationalization of the operation, economization of energy and improvement of the environment. Under such situation, the development of photographic materials and of exposing printers is advancing.
Photographic materials which can be processed in a bright room are specifically those which can be processed in a room having a lightness of from 100 to 300 luxes from the use of a fluorescent lamp with a reduced ultraviolet ray emission, or a light not having the wavelength of 400 nm or less as a safelight source.
As the light source for such bright room type silver halide photographic materials, there are mentioned, for example, a high pressure mercury lamp, a metal halide, a microwave discharge type mercury nonelectrode light source, a xenon lamp and a halogen lamp.
In order to obtain good character images, line images or dot images by contact exposure of such bright room type silver halide photographic material with a printer using the above-mentioned light which is rich in the wavelength component of from visible to ultraviolet ranges, the photographic material is required to have a high contrast photographic characteristic (especially having a gamma value of 10 or more), and various image-forming systems for such material have heretofore been provided.
As one method for obtaining such high contrast photographic characteristic by the use of a stable developer, it is known to use hydrazine derivatives, for example, as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,224,401, 4,168,977, 4,166,742, 4,311,781, 4,272,606, 4,221,857 and 4,269,929. In accordance with such a method, a photographic characteristic of high contrast and high sensitivity can be obtained. In addition, since a sulfite of a high concentration is allowed to be added to the developer, the stability of the developer against aerial oxidation is noticeably improved as compared with a lith developer.
Hydrazine derivative-containing low sensitive bright room type photographic materials are described in, for example, JP-A-60-14038, JP-A-60-162246, JP-A-61-238049 and JP-A-63-208846 (the term "JP-A" as used herein refers to a "published unexamined Japanese patent application"), British Patent 2,202,341A, and Japanese Patent Application No. 62-218648.
However, when such high contrast photographic materials are subjected to contact work exposure with an exposure printer, the photographic material would be contacted with another or with some other substance of a different kind, or would be peeled off from another photographic material contacted or some other substance of a different kind, to cause surface friction therebetween, whereby an electrostatic charge would be accumulated on the surface of the materials. Because of the thus-charged electricity, dust would inevitably adhere to the surface of the photographic material being processed or the original film to cause pinholes in the material developed. Accordingly, extreme effort is needed for correcting the pinhole problem or in re-exposing the material. Such is a serious problem. In order to overcome such a problem, a technique of using a surfactant for improving the electrified characteristic of photographic materials has been proposed as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,982,652, 3,428,456, 3,457,076, 3,454,625, 3,552,972, 3,655,387, 2,992,108 and 3,206,312, JP-A-49-85826, JP-A-49-33630, JP-A-48-87826, JP-A-61-41143, JP-B-49-11567 and JP-B-49-11568 (the term "JP-B" as used herein refers to an "examined Japanese patent publication"), which, however, is still insufficient. Under the circumstances, therefore, development of photographic materials which hardly give pinholes is strongly desired in this technical field.